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Robert Thicknesse on Opera

Had Tchaikovsky had his way, his The Tempest might not actually have had a tempest in it at all. As he first pondered his Shakespearean fantasy-overture in early 1873, the Russian composer considered

What Italian opera signified to the Habsburg court

In her 2001 book about the city, travel writer Jan Morris famously described Trieste as ‘the meaning of nowhere’ – a place left behind by history and by its political geography. A quarter of a century

Just two decades after the premiere of George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, the Soviet Union paid a New York opera company to stage performances there. The year was 1956 and the Cold War was well underwa

In other circumstances, it would be heartening to see an opera getting national attention. Yet once again, the recent buzz around Covent Garden concerns politics rather than performances. The latest f